Royal Navy fliers are knuckling down to life in the fjords as they warm up for the UK’s premier maritime deployment of 2025.
Men and women from 815 Naval Air Squadron are embarked in a Norwegian warship in preparation for serving aboard HNoMS Roald Amundsen from next month.
The Norwegian frigate is part of the UK and international escort supporting HMS Prince of Wales as Britain’s flagship deploys to the western Pacific Rim on an eight-month mission which will deepen our defense partnerships and promote security and stability.
Throughout she’ll operate a Wildcat helicopter, supported by around ten personnel – air and ground crew, collectively known as a ‘flight’ – from RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset, are more usually found on Royal Navy frigates and destroyers.
To prepare them for life in a Norwegian vessel, they are spending several weeks in Norway – first training ashore, now at sea aboard the Amundsen’s sister ship Otto Sverdrup on a large-scale Anglo-Norwegian exercise in the confined waters around Bergen, Tamber Shield 2025.
Before joining the Sverdrup, the Wildcat team were put through their paces at the Norwegian Navy’s safety center to demonstrate they can deal with emergencies at sea – using their host’s equipment.
The team had to demonstrate they could deal with a helicopter crash – simulated by two smashed cars – carefully, but quickly, extricating the (dummy) occupants.
The heat was turned up on the Brits as fires raged throughout the burning hulk of a helicopter – once they had mastered the Norwegians’ firefighting kit which differs from the UK.
They found the firefighting kit to be extremely effective – while their tactics to bring the conflagration under control impressed their Norwegian hosts, even if they did succeed in drenching everyone involved in the exercise.
Two Wildcat flights will support the Amundsen throughout its time assigned to the carrier task group; a second group of sailors from 815 NAS is due to replace their colleagues in the late summer.
All will be expected to get stuck in if there is a fire or flood onboard the frigate – as they would aboard a British warship.
The Royal Norwegian Navy’s facilities – a moving, partly-flooded series of warship compartments – are almost identical to the Royal Navy damage trainers in Portsmouth and Plymouth, as are the methods required to stop the torrent: hammering soft wooden wedges into holes, then propping them up.
Engineer Connor Miller said thanks to many of both the theoretical and practical training being “not too dissimilar from our own”, the Wildcat team quickly settled into the rhythm of working with the Norwegian colleagues.
“My favorite part of the course was getting hands on with the rescue equipment and using it on the cars which gave me an appreciation of how difficult it is to gain access to a vehicle but also kept me thoroughly entertained throughout,” he added.
Fellow Air Engineering Technician Matt ‘Godders’ Godfrey has been bowled over by Norwegian hospitality – from the stunning setting of its naval training establishments amid the fjords to the quality of food served up daily (with conscription part of everyday life in Norway, it means even Michelin-starred chefs are called up).
He added: “The Norwegian attitude to training and service makes them a formidable ally.
“Their familiarity with our procedures, built over past Tamber Shield exercises, has meant a quick start to proceedings.”
Those ‘proceedings’ involve several hundred British and Norwegian sailors, a clutch of Royal Navy P2000 fast patrol craft, Norwegian missile boats, the Sverdrup, tanker/support ship Maud and several Wildcat helicopters.
They are honing missile drills, fending off fast attack craft, torpedo runs and operating all while operating in the confines of the fjords. The methods and tactics used will be exploited by both navies, including the defence of the Prince of Wales task force.